Doubt
by Bald as Malak
Summary: This piece is my response to two requests from Trillian's What do you want to read forum. The two requests I'm meeting kind of are: a. any piece about Zez Kai El and b. oneshot where Kavar [Zez Kai El] is tempted.seduced by the Exile just before judgement


**--DOUBT--**

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**This piece is my response to two requests from Trillian's "What do you want to read" forum. The two requests I'm meeting (kind of) are:

...(a) any piece about Zez-Kai El and

...(b) "One-shot where Kavar (but in my case Kavar is replaced by Zez-Kai El) is tempted/seduced by the F/DS/Exile. Takes place right around (before/during/after) the Council meeting where the Exile becomes the Exile. Or heck, maybe she doesn't even have to be DS..."

Hope you enjoy!

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I gave my regular beta-reader a break this time. Instead, mucho thanks to Vaguely Familiar for her helpful comments on this piece.

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**Jedi Council Chambers (Zez-Kai El). Two hours before the time of judgement.**

"I am not sure that this is wise, to make our judgement before hearing what she has to say."

"Bah," Vrook says, his eyes resting only a moment on me before he turns his attention to the others in the room. "What could she tell us that we don't already know? Can you not feel her? She is a blank space in the Force, a life that should not exist. I tell you, the only reason that she comes to us now is that she has lost her power. She hopes that we will give it back to her. Given her record, that is not a course I can sanction."

I don't think we have the ability to restore her, but those are words that would be lost at this time. I turn to Master Kavar, hoping that he will provide some reason for us to postpone this judgement. During the whole discussion, he has stood at the far window, his gaze restlessly roaming the scenery outside.

"Kavar, of all of us, you know her the best. Why, in your opinion, do you think she has returned?" As I address him, I see his shoulders slump, and I wonder if he had planned to not speak at all during this deliberation of his apprentice's fate.

After a moment, Master Kavar sighs, and then turns his gaze towards me, but only for a moment. Like Vrook, he seems to prefer talking with the others. "I knew her well when she trained under me, but it has been many years since then, and war changes the unwary. The woman who wears her face now is angry and lost where the other was kind and patient. I'm afraid I can not vouch for her anymore."

Once Master Kavar says that, the fate of his apprentice is quickly decided, and my voice is silenced, as tradition dictates, to ensure that the Jedi Council will present a united front to the one to be judged. As the dissenter, to me will fall the duty of initiating the judgement, of saying the ritual words that will precede the passing of sentence. Exile.

As soon as the details are worked out, I leave the Council chambers. I am not happy with this course of action, and though I will follow the path laid down out of respect for my peers, I do so with a heart that shrinks in on itself. I take deep breaths as I make my way to my room, trying to find some kind of peace in the Force that will make this ache I feel go away. As I approach my door, I am still uneasy.

I do not want to see anyone. My doubts are too strong to hide, and I did not want to shame my peers in revealing them. I sit at my desk and quickly contact those with whom I have appointments, changing the times of each one.

My time of silence was not to be, however. Perhaps she is not as lost to the Force as we thought, or perhaps she has other means of knowing the troubles in my heart. Ten minutes after I set the kettle on the stove, she is there, in my room.

Even as the knock begins, quiet, timid, I am getting out of the small couch where I am trying to relax and moving towards the door. I open the door, expecting to see a Padawan, eyes downcast in the semblance of true or ritual humility, calling me to the judgement I dread. Instead, Kavar's apprentice is there, dressed in simple Jedi robes but with the marks of war all about her nonetheless.

I should be stunned, but I invite her in as if this visit is scheduled and expected.

"Sit down please. Would you like some tea?"

She doesn't say anything, just shuffles quietly to the seat I have indicated, her head bowed forward, as if penitent. Or perhaps it is simply the weight of what she carries, or what she has done, I think, as I pour the tea I had been brewing into two cups. Then, I move towards her, one cups in each hand as if I'm weighing her fate.

I am, perhaps, silly in what I feel, but I strive to keep the cups at the same height as I move towards her. Perhaps it is the care that I'm taking that tips her off, for her head slowly rises as I approach, moving from my feet to the cups, and then to my eyes, which she greets with a smile so faint and quick, it is like a dream you know you've had, but never remember.

Though the smile is gone, her eyes do not leave mine as I place our cups down, each touching the table at the same time, and at the same distance from the centre of the small table we are at. Leaning forward, she lets the steam of the Dantooine Meadow Grove tea slide up her face, curling like the tail of a Coruscanti cat past her thin lips and sharp nose.

Her eyes are streaked with fire red lines, bursting out of her dark pupils like the tendrils of light escaping the shadows of an eclipse. I find myself thinking of the one time I had seen her face before, on the records that Kavar had given us before today. That picture had been taken just before she had decided to join Revan for the war, when her innocence had led her to choose the bright path of saving others over the murky path of Jedi wisdom.

In those days, the holophoto told us, her eyes had been a warm green, like the welcoming moss that one finds in the corner of a quiet grove, on the shadowed side of a large, old trees. Now, the red flares seem to seep into each cranny of her eyes, like lava that burns away the dross of life, leaving blackened, green-brown wastes.

"Thank you for seeing me," she says, while I sit there mesmerized by her eyes. "None of the others would, not even Master Kavar."

It is the way of the Force, I understand, that she and I accept this meeting, though no word has been spoken between us before this hour. And it speaks to me of a woman who is not totally lost to the Force.

I look more deeply at her, searching for hints within her of the Force that we may have missed before. They are not there. I can find no whisper of the Force within her. She is empty of all its color and vitality, like nothing I have ever seen before, even at the most barren of sites in Tatooine.

And yet, all around this emptiness, strands of the Force, of all colours and sizes and sounds, are constantly reaching out to her, brushing the surface of her, and then pulling back, their edges fraying like ripped silk. Damaged, like an innocent pet that is whipped by trusted masters, they return again and again as soon as the punishment is withdrawn.

"Why have you come to me? What is it you seek?"

"I want to say that I came here for you, and not for me, but that is not true. I have come here for myself, although I don't want to change your judgement. I came here to face the judgement of the Council, not to avoid it. Besides, that is a matter for the Council and I do not see the Council here." She smiles again. This time, it is a flicker of amusement that dashes across her eyes like a child hopping from rock to rock across a small stream. "I just want someone to talk with, to have a moment of human contact before I take on the mantle of my past again."

I find myself unable to leave the play of forces within her eyes, even as she continues on, her voice soft and yet insistent.

"But I have also come here for you, Zez-Kai El. I think you have lost your way as I have. I think you are as much of victim of the war as any who fought on the front lines. Do you know what I mean?"

As she speaks these words, the spell I'm under breaks. Inside me flares a pain long ignored, a fire awoken by the soft breeze of her words, carrying wisdom from forbidden lands. I realize at that moment that I do know what she means, or at least in part. She speaks of a wound in me, one from no blow that I know of, and yet no less destructive for that absence. And though it pales compared to the emptiness she carries, it resonates with the same message: the Force is wounded and it is the Jedi, not the Sith, who have inflicted the harm.

I lose myself then, trying to track inside my mind when this injury was inflicted upon me, and so I don't notice her move until she is in my lap. As the skin of her hands slides across my neck and shoulders, I stiffen, now afraid that she seeks something I'm not willing to give. But the hands move by, until her arms wrap themselves around me. Her head tucks itself under my left cheek and then she is gently squeezing me: a long, constant pressure that speaks of nothing but its undeniable presence.

After a while, I begin to wonder why this contact with her does not burn me as it does the other aspects of the Force. Not moving, my arms still rigid at my sides, I let my senses roam the places where I am touching her. Along my skin, I see walls of restraint that guard the entrance to my soul. Around me, strands of the Force flow by, around, and sometimes through my barriers. Each ripple of the Force varies in color, shape, sound. Each as its own urgency, its own rhythm, its own path to follow.

All that changes when one touches my barriers. Then, they are pulled in, emerging from my discipline as thick, constant filaments of argent power.

The walls are built of years of discipline, crafted—or so I had thought until now—to keep myself on the path of light. They are, I had told myself many times, the way by which I protect myself against the world's unruly passions. Protected, I would, like so many others in recent times, be pulled to the Dark Side.

And yet in this moment I realize that, because of those walls, I am more alike to Kavar's apprentice than I would have thought possible. Though I do not feed of the Force's death, I do draw power from its transformation. I am walking the path of power, converting those unruly passions of life's whims into the fuel for my will. While my intentions are honorable, the consequences of my choices are not. The Force suffers from my taking almost as much as from the darkness in the woman beside me.

Beauty is changed into a possession.

Slowly, slowly, my lungs fill deeply, tasting her scent and the aroma of the cooling teas nearby even as their expansion lifts her body. My quiet breath howls like the strongest gale in the Force's eye, pulling at my walls until they begin to crumble. Small gaps become bigger gaps, new gaps burst through, until, when my lungs can hold no more air, the walls finally dissolve. I think I can almost hear my former guardians wailing as the last brick of them disappears.

And then loose strands of her hair, long and dark as night, flutter as my breath leaves again, carrying with it my last illusions about the Order I have served so faithfully. My arms lift and I squeeze back.

As we continue to sit there, I'm touching whole new aspects of life I had never dreamed of. I try to form words in my mind to describe them, to capture what I'm feeling so that I can explain it to Kavar, Atris, Vrook, and the others, but I find in the end I have no way to explain it except this: the Force is more beautiful than I can describe, it's always changing, and it knows no life or death.

A wildness fills me and I almost laugh, but even before the sound can form in my throat, it is sucked into the void that my arms surround. And then I remember who it is that I hold, and, more importantly, what she holds in turn. Then I feel a dampness on my cheek, and hear the breath that echoes mine but is ragged where mine thrums with life.

We sit there for a long time, until a discrete knock signals that the time of judgement has arrived.

"I'll be there soon," I call out, and I hear the footsteps of the dutiful Padawan fade into the background.

The woman in my lap sighs as she pushes away from me. Standing, she straightens her robes. It is a futile effort, they fit badly on her. _They belong to another_, I realize sadly.

"Do you feel it now, the wound that you carry?" she asked, her voice mirroring the sadness I sense in her.

"I do and you have shown me the way beyond it, though it will take me some time to walk the path. Thank you."

"I did no such thing," she says, her words now clipped, the red fires in her eyes almost glowing. "I have no gifts to give."

I open my mouth to explain that she is wrong, to help her understand what she stirred inside of me, but words elude me. I reach out towards her with the Force, hoping to convey the understanding that I can not articulate, but the quicksand inside her reaches towards me and I have to pull back.

_There is no way_, I realize, _for me to help her understand. The Force has worked through her to show this to me, but not to her. _

"Some gifts are given unwittingly," I say to her then, pulling her into my arms again, "and the deserving are not always the ones who benefit." Now it is she who is stiff, and I hold her only for a moment before allowing her to step back.

"Thank you for seeing me" she says, her voice unable to mask the bitterness inside her. "I'm glad it has benefited you."

I want to ask her if this visit has helped her too, but I can see the darkness closing in on her again and I know that whatever respite she may have had, it is gone now.

The sadness returns in a rush, the one that I have felt for the last five years as I've watched the young Jedi fall, corrupted or killed by the Mandalorian and Sith wars. This time, however, I don't hide it. For the first time since I was a child, I allow myself to cry.

"Thank you," she says again, but this time with a touch of wonder in her voice. As I stand there, she reaches towards me, each hand lifting a finger to capture one tear. Her eyes don't leave mine as she brings the tears to her own eyes, releasing them so that they slide down her cheeks. "That is what I needed."

Without another word, she turns to the door and lets herself out. I wish for a moment to understand how I helped her, but perhaps it is as far from my understanding as her lesson to me is from hers.

As the door thumps close behind her retreating back, I realize that it is time to leave the Order. I know through the wild Force that now runs through me that my friends here will also fail to understand what I have learned. I have always been the one prone to uncertainty, to fretting about unanswered questions. They will pass this off as just another moment, when Zez-Kai El wonders about the place of the Order, and about how we apply our power.

Like Kavar's apprentice, the Jedi are no longer moved by the Force. We shunt it around to serve our purposes. It is power to us, not beauty or wonder or gift appreciated. Treating it as the fuel for our living our Code, that is as evil as anything the Sith have ever done. Because we, like the Sith, take what we want rather than accept what gifts the Force might choose to give us.

And that is why we will fall, and why I must leave. I will not use the Force again, until it gives itself to me of its own free will.


End file.
